Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Visitors from Ireland and a Lost Freebie

We are in the process of redecorating a room, planting 9 new shrubs in the yard, re-staining furniture, and about 10 other things in preparation for our company from Ireland.  This will be their 3rd year visiting us.  Long story short...my parents met this couple on a cruise a few years back.   They were "table mates" at dinner each night.  They became great friends and the next thing we all knew is that they were coming over for a visit.  My parents are 77, going on 35.  They still travel, golf, work, or whatever they feel like.  So I was expecting their "new Irish friends" to be about their age.  They ended up being my age!! They have two beautiful children (yes... adorable, red headed, and boy do I love to hear them talk!) and have become very dear friends of our entire family.  So every summer we all get together for more fun and visiting.  We've been to Disney World, Kings Island, the Smokey Mountains, etc. together.  I am anxiously awaiting their arrival tomorrow!

In the process of cleaning my office  the dining room table for their visit, I found a "lost freebie" that I meant to post, ummm...probably 4 or 5 months ago when I was actually teaching shapes.  It was like finding a little treasure to share.  So....while I'm thinking about it, grab it and throw it in your Geometry pile and use when you're teaching 3-d shapes.  Yes, it has the little detective clipart on it (again).  It seems like anytime I do a discovery activity, I'm throwing on that adorable clipart.  It's probably the best $3.00 I've spent this year.  (Scrappin doodles)   :-)
During my solids intro, I  placed a variety of 3-d shapes at each table and allowed the students to explore them and fill out this graphic organizer together.  It prompted some great discussion since some of them weren't sure about the word vertices.  It's simple, but fun.  We checked together, discussing the solids' real names, fixed their errors, etc.  It's a great little intro to solids if you need one. Click on image to grab!

Bananas for my Irish friends and the little treasures we find when cleaning!